Our Hearts Are Free: The Story Behind the Song

Months into the war between Russia and Ukraine I had to process my emotions through a song. The first time I did that was when the guy who played Jesus in my  high school production of Godspell reneged on his invitation to the prom. Since then songwriting has saved me over and over again, whenever life is too much. Usually the lyrics do not come first. I sit at the piano and come up with a musical motif, brainstorm some lyrical lines, flesh out the verse and chorus melodies, work on the lyrics away from the piano whenever I have a spare moment, return to the keyboard, and tweak the entire creation. The bridge, a section that usually appears only once in a song, comes last. It changes things up in some way musically and contains a new thought that feeds into the final verse (if there is one) and chorus (outro).

As I wrote "Our Hearts Are Free" I imagined Simon Le Bon of the pop rock band Duran Duran singing it. Because he has worked with people I know, I had met him a couple times and would be able to forward him the song. I emailed the song to Wendy Laister, Nick Rhodes' cousin and the manager of Duran Duran, and she was complimentary and encouraging. Although Simon ultimately declined, I was excited to be able to share the song with him since his music has meant so much to me over the years.

The words for "Our Hearts Are Free" came relatively easily, beginning with the title. At first I thought it would be called “Lanterns of Darkness;” however when working on the chorus the last two lines including the title came to me when I added the melodic tag at the end: We'll always shine, Our hearts are free. I like the empowering message inherent in those words, suggesting independence and resilience. It took some searching to come up with the right two-syllable word to represent Babyn Yar, the ravine and site of the memorial commemorating the execution by the Nazis of almost the entire Jewish population of Kyiv in the early 1940s. Babyn Yar was hit by Russian missiles days into the current war, in March 2022. I ended up using the word valley. The toughest lyrical lines to write were about children. Children playing underground came from the divine source that I credit whenever an image or words seem to appear from outside myself. I got the last line of the final verse quickly—Sirens wailing overhead—but it took some time for the line Too afraid to go to bed  to materialize, and when it did it was as if it just dropped into my consciousness. That was the last lyric I wrote.

As for which musicians to invite to play on the track, the decisions were not difficult. My daughter Milana Resta (then 13) would perform the violin part and Steve Ferrone, who played on my two favorite Duran Duran songs (“Ordinary World” and “Too Much Information”) as well as countless other recordings dating back to the 1970s, would play drums. Robert Holmes from the band 'Til Tuesday provided the foundational guitar parts and bass guitar player Matt Girard crafted a John Tayloresque bass part. My oldest two sons, Ivo and Vlado Resta (then 11 and 6), sang with Milana on backgrounds. I played keyboards and sang. Anthony J. Resta, who worked on two Duran Duran albums and is the father of my children, co-produced and added additional guitars, keyboards, and his usual creative sound design. Grammy-nominated engineer Karyadi mixed, and Grammy-winner Bob St. John, who worked with Anthony on the Duran Duran albums and is one of my favorite people in the world, mastered the track. All participants added their own magic, so I am very grateful.

Once I recorded my keyboard parts and a scratch vocal (of which I ended up using a lot for the final vocal), we sent the track to Robert Holmes in England and he put down rhythm guitar parts. I don't play guitar because when I tried it for a spell it hurt my fingers, but I love acoustic guitar on my tracks. Matt Girard recorded at his home studio in Michigan. Steve Ferrone lives in the Los Angeles area not far from me so I was fortunate to be present when he recorded drums at his Drumroll Studio, with Karyadi engineering. I am thrilled to have my own original Steve Ferrone track!

Despite the thrilling energy of performing live, when recording in the studio I can be in my own space and get my vocals to sound exactly as I wish. I wanted to be very careful how I performed the lead vocal, as I am ever cognizant that the words reflect my impressions of the war from the perspective of an American, albeit with Ukrainian roots; in a way it is not my story to tell. I did not want to make it sound like I was purposely emoting but rather telling a story. I did not want my voice or performance to get in the way of the images or the message. My voice cracked on the word bed and I did not correct it. I purposely did not belt on the last syllable of overhead and was careful how I emphasized the word wail in the final verse because I did not want to project feigned emotion, or drive home what the words and production did on their own.

I refrained from adding harmonies in the hopes that Simon or Bono from U2 would sing them. Singing backgrounds is one of my favorite things to do, and feels indulgent as I digitally stack my voices, so when it was clear that my voice would be on the final version I decided neither to double it nor to harmonize. I do like the plaintiveness of a single vocal.

For this reason, too, I wanted Milana to record a single violin track. That was an interesting session in the studio as I was really specific about where I wanted emphasis. I directed her through the solo by projecting what I envisioned when composing the notes, calm followed by anticipation and rising fear as soldiers approach. The most challenging part was two accented notes occurring in a row, which I struggled to get just so even at the mixing stage.

The church bells on the track are passages from the Ukrainian national anthem, which is one of my favorite pieces of music. Right after the war began, I kept Milana and Ivo up for a couple hours past their bedtime (they were troopers during my relentless pursuit of perfection) to record the anthem on my phone a cappella, and I posted it online to express our support for our family in Ukraine. We actually speak Russian at home because that is what my Belarusian grandmother and Ukrainian grandfather spoke with my mother and that is what I learned. Therefore, we had to twist our brains to adjust to Ukrainian, which like Russian, was born of the Proto-Slavic language but has its own unique character. When I found on YouTube a recording of church bells playing the anthem, with the crunch of footsteps and shelling in the background, I felt compelled to incorporate that at the song's beginning and end, with its dissonance imparting a sorrowful quality I like. Anthony also cleverly added a segment before the pre-chorus lines. Going into the final verse I didn't realize at first that my piano part had grabbed a few notes that suggested the last line of the anthem. Unfortunately, despite searches in English and Ukrainian I have been unable to find the recording again on Youtube so I hope the person who recorded them will find this page so I can give him or her credit.

I knew I wanted the last verse to be sparse at first, and I love how Steve played a cymbal on the word cold before coming back in full on. I wanted the children on vocals in the final chorus to add the element of innocence and purity. Bringing their two toddler siblings into the studio even when not trying to record is a challenge, as they get into everything, but somehow we got through it without needing to re-record anything.

Milana and Ivo can be challenging to work with together because they feed off each other in a sweet but at times annoying way. They kept laughing while recording their vocals into the same microphone, but because they are both gifted musically it turned out fine. Finally we got what we needed and I fired them! Vlado was at first not willing to sing, but after his sister and brother had finished their parts with much scolding, he stepped up to the mike, shirtless, and recorded like a pro, with perfect pitch and impeccable timing, serious and committed. He wanted to keep adding tracks even when we had enough!

It was not until all the aforementioned pieces were recorded that I thought of placing at the very beginning of the song the words Our hearts are free in Ukrainian: Наші серця вільні, transliterated as Nashi sertysa vil’ni. I asked my nieces in Ukraine to send me via text a recording of themselves saying the words, and my niece Ira was even creative enough to add a melody, but I didn't get it until after we had mixed, so I used the voice of her sister Alyona and mixed in mine as a whisper to impart an ethereal quality.

It is my hope that "Our Hearts Are Free" will touch people's hearts and inspire donations that will go directly to helping Ukrainians who have suffered as a result of the war with Russia. Neither I nor anyone else will take any percentage of the profits. I also envision a live performance of the song with the players on the recording, a chorus of children of different nationalities, and Bono joining me on both the verses and background vocals. Although in the song there is a clear undercurrent of the horrors of war, I hear it as an anthem of resilience and it would be fulfulling to perform it in a large venue.